McCarthy’s Mother Pig performance at Shushi Gallery in 1983 was the first time he used a set, a practice which came to characterize his later works. Here, McCarthy squirts liquid out of a bottle held near his crotch onto a stuffed animal in the shape of a lion. The costuming, materials, and simulated bodily functions frequently appear in McCarthy’s work, which often disturbingly juxtaposes visceral and startling manipulation of the body with the cheerful artifacts of popular consumer culture.
Known for his transgressive performance art pieces that often challenge social conventions, Paul McCarthy is undoubtedly one of the main figures in the West Coast contemporary art scene. Using different forms from pop culture as source material, McCarthy casts a critical look at American society and consumerism. With a particularly poignant sense humor, his works also investigate the intricacies of human psychology.
Forest Gathering N.2 is part of the series of photographs Beneath the Roses (2003-2005) where anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios...
Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...
Custom-built for a silent film star in 1934 in Santa Monica, the Sten-Frenke House is an idiosyncratic icon...
This photograph of Martin Creed himself was used as the invitation card for a fundraising auction of works on paper at Christie’s South Kensington in support of Camden Arts Centre’s first year in a refurbished building in 2005...
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
This work presents the image of an immolated monk engraved on a baseball bat...
In the flash animation SpringValle_ber_girls , Petra Cortright collages together surreal scenes out of unnaturally idyllic desktop screensavers with equally unreal computer-generated women that pop in and out of the landscape...
Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building...
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...
Lambri’s careful framing in Untitled (Miller House, #02) redefines our understanding of this iconic mid-century modernist building located in Palm Springs, California...
The Breaks reflects Capistran’s interests in sampling and fusing different cultural, social, and historical sources...
The Pixelated Revolution is a lecture-performance by artist Rabih Mroué about the use of mobile phones during the Syrian revolution...
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...
From the series the Old and the New (XI) by Carlos Garaicoa belongs to the series Lo viejo y lo nuevo / Das Alte und das Neue (The Old and the New) which was first exhibited in 2010 at Barbara Gross Gallery in Germany...
A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...
The five drawings included in the 101 Collection are representative of Pettibon’s characteristic cartoonish style...